Before Night Falls: A Memoir Paperback – October 1, 1994

Reinaldo Arenas, Before Night Falls (Penguin, 1993)Arenas' memoir of life in Cuba has recently been made into one of the finest films extant by Julian Schnabel. Schnabel did an excellent job with the book; while his interpretation of the text was loose in places, he managed to capture in images the style of Arenas' writing.In other words, if you saw the movie before reading the book, you're going to be somewhat surprised. Some of Schnabel's more memorable scenes are mentioned in passing (if at all) in the book, and one of the film's central sequences, the balloon escape, gets one sentence. Where Arenas and Schnabel intersect is in the lushness, the ability to find celebration and remarkable beauty inside the ugliness of the Castro regime (and, for a few years' worth, the Batista regime before it).Arenas' memoir is also likely to shock more than a few in its sexual explicitness (another aspect Schnabel rather shied away from, which I found a tad surprising while reading the book), but so be it. There is nothing gratuitous about either Arenas' promiscuity or his literary descriptions of it; it's no different than using the language of excess to describe the beastliness of a life that involves hand-to-mouth poverty and political censure. And throughout, more than anything (and perhaps this is what makes the book so powerful), Before Night Falls is a celebration, both of Arenas' life and the lives of many other Cuban writers persecuted as dissidents in the latter half of the twentieth century. **** 1/2

I bought Before Night Falls by Reinaldo Arenas after seeing the movie version (yeah, I watched some of Brokeback Mountain, FYI). It was the artistic ambience of Arenas' Cuba in the movie that prompted me to get the book. Yet the author's struggle against the oppressive Communist system was the redeeming social value of this autobiography. For a fellow who spent half of his leisure time having sex with other men when not indulging his literary tastes, it was quite an accomplishment indeed.Before his arrest, Arenas describes how Cuba went from the frying pan to the fire in ousting Batista in favor of Castro. As he points out, the revolution was not for everyone, specifically anyone who disagreed with Fidel's bizarro Commie philosophy. He instituted a rat system that would have been Heinrich Himmler's wet dream, imprisoning anyone who did not squeal on 'enemies of the State'. This resulted in friends betraying friends, families exiling relatives, and an epidemic of suicide for those who had no hope of escaping the prison-like island. Counterrevolutionaries were defined as not just faeries, but criminals, asocials, most intellectuals, and anyone who disagreed with the regime. Possibly the most astonishing thing is how people continued to indulge themselves regardless of mortal danger. Arenas regularly engaged in sex on the beach (no, not the drink) and had a few of his books smuggled to France before he was arrested.According to Arenas, Cuban prisons are the worst in human history, and it's entirely believable when considering the subtropical climate. The latrines are where it all begins, trenches in the dirt floor of a ward crowded with two hundred inmates. He describes the stench mingled with the body odor of prisoners whose clothes are never washed - inmates are doused with a bucket of water twice a week. Clouds of flies swarm around these latrines, and one withdraws to the infestation of fleas, lice and ticks throughout the facility. Prisoners released their tensions by maiming and murdering one another, and guards stood by when not directly participating. Arenas survived two years before French activists secured his release. Shortly afterward, Castro emptied his prisons and expelled all qualified undesirables from Mariel Harbor (remember Scarface?) in 1980. Arenas made it to the USA, and died of AIDS a couple of years later.One of the issues that prevails to this day is the rejection of the exiled Cubans by leftists here in America. Ironically, he and the other persecuted 'anti-revolutionaries' got their greatest support from liberals around the world before they were deported. Once they left Cuba, they were soon reclassified as part of the conservative-supported anti-Castro movement in the States trying to sabotage discussions with the regime. The same groups that were promoting Cuban writers' literature eventually would not let their voices be heard as Cuban-US relations were redefined.Granted, this is an unblinking self-portrait of an unrepentant pervert. Yet the quality of his poetry and his testimonio earns his place in literary history. He clung to his writings as ferociously as his aberrations, and his sheer lust for life and love of nature is manifested through his work. You may never read me singing a faerie's praises like this again (uh, BTW, faerie is just one of the words he uses to describe himself and those like him), but---Reinaldo Arenas was truly one of a kind.

This book shocked me, comforted me, saddened me and, at the end, disappointed me. After he spends so much of the book covering this misfortune in Cuba, I felt depressed by the way the book ends (and in the city I live in, no less!).Definitely an honest, unadulterated account of one author who lived through many things in his life. I highly recommend reading it.

an inside in depth first person perspective of growing up in very impoverished Cuba and his life struggles

An intense autobiography from an author of the Latin/Spanish intelligensia from Cuba. For us readers from the South-east Asia, Reinaldo Arenas comes out as a sad figure, an opponent & exile from an authoritarian regime, that we of a colonial past can empathize with another caged soul from a land yet to be truely liberated.His own wasted life in exile as a gay man struggling with drugs and other addictions, and his final tragic death by suicide makes a bitter-sweet record of a human journey of want, unbridled desires, defeat & yet of great hope!.

Probably one of the most underrated Latin American/Cuban authors.

An incredible, unique LGBTQI+ perspective from Castro's Cuba that chronicles the life of Reinaldo Arenas. Confronting yet tastefully humorous in parts, this memoir provides a fascinating insight into the early years of Cuban communism.

Quick dispatch and delivery.Book in fantastic condition.An incredible read. Really, truly, wonderful.Makes you laugh and cry.